We now know that Nvidia will officially announce its GeForce GTX 480 and 470 graphics cards on March 26. Only some of Nvidia's card partners may be at the party, however. DigiTimes has learned from anonymous sources that most of Nvidia's second-tier partners still haven't received "complete reference board designs."

Nvidia reportedly intends to prioritize "first-tier makers or makers that only produce Nvidia cards." As DigiTimes points out, XFX and PNY versions of the upcoming GF100 cards have already shown up for pre-order in the United States, so those partners will presumably be among those receiving preferential treatment. Cards from tier-two manufacturers may not start shipping until April.

It doesn't work that way tier one partners are chosen based on the market share / brand popularity they have. Asus and MSI are considered tier one partners (no brainer) yet they make both ati and nV cards. Reason is onbvious they have giant market and well known brand by everyone even Joe the Plumber.

XFX has been very active in the advertising front for quite some time recently which probably made nV happy about giving them the upper hand in chip allocations.